Yankees owner George Steinbrenner dies at 80NEW YORK – George Steinbrenner, who rebuilt the New York Yankees into a sports empire with a mix of bluster and big bucks that polarized fans all across America, died Tuesday. He had just celebrated his 80th birthday July 4.

Steinbrenner had a heart attack, was taken to St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Fla., and died at about 6:30 a.m, a person close to the owner told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the team had not disclosed those details.

His death was the second in three days to rock the Yankees. Bob Sheppard, the team's revered public address announcer from 1951-07, died Sunday at 99...

Even if you never watched a baseball game in your life, there was a pretty good chance you were well acquainted with George Steinbrenner, the 80-year-old New York Yankees owner who died on Tuesday.

Steinbrenner -- or at least a bumbling version of the baseball baron -- appeared on 14 episodes of "Seinfeld" as the boss of George Costanza (Jason Alexander), the assistant to the team's traveling secretary.

The Steinbrenner double, always with his back to the camera and voiced by series co-creator Larry David -- who had fantasized as a kid about working for the Yankees -- was depicted as a nitwit with a fondness for calzones, Pat Benatar and Cuban cigar wrappers.

"(David) really created this very caricature, this very mercurial personality who's just completely all over the place and neurotic," star and co-creator Jerry Seinfeld later recalled.

In one episode, the Steinbrenner character opines that "(Yankees icon) Babe Ruth was nothing more than a fat old man with little-girl legs... "